Every time I come through the border to enter Israel, my stress levels reach their highest. Even though I have done nothing to harm anyone nor have I committed any crimes, because I am a returning Palestinian, I fear the possibility of being refused entry into my own country and hence I am plagued with a feeling of guilt. This guilty feeling is triggered by the experience I had at the border in 2004. I was issued an entrance visa valid for only one week even though I claimed that I needed a decent amount of time to visit my family. Of course, the Israelis don’t need to give me any means of justification for their actions. They just make you feel as if you have done something wrong.

This time, I was only afraid of the duration of my stay - whether they would give me the customary three months entry visa in my capacity as a Japanese citizen. I had not expected at all that I would be denied entry. Shockingly enough, the border control officers said I needed a so called 'returning-visa' to enter Israel given that I also hold a Jerusalem ID.

I had heard of an increasing number of tourists denied entry into Israel. According to a Haaretz report on June 15, the number of tourists denied entry in 2007 rose to 2,941 cases, an increase of 60% compared to 2005 in which there were 1,828 cases. However, I had never expected that Israeli immigration officers would deny a person entry for not having a visa to return to one’s own country, the place where I was born. I was sent back and told to go to the Israeli embassy to wait for a response from the foreign affairs office. After a week or so in Egypt, I received a phone call indicating that my Jerusalem residence ID number had been canceled and that I could only enter Israel as a tourist.

After entering my own country as a Japanese tourist, I began to hear several stories similar to my own. Other people's stories made me realize that the revocation of residency rights in east Jerusalem is not as uncommon as it used to be. According to B'tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, the number of residents in east Jerusalem who had their Jerusalem IDs revoked in 2006 reached an all time high at 1,363. This is more than six times the case than 2005 when the number was 222.

For many east Jerusalemites, this residency card is their only form of identification. While it allows them to move freely within the country, it does not constitute citizenship. Contrarily, every Jew, even immigrants who had never been to Israel before are eligible for citizenship automatically. While this is racist enough, what is worse is that this residency card is constantly under the risk of confiscation.

So-called "un-identifiable" residency within Jerusalem is the most common reason for revocation. That is, if the ID holder cannot prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that they hold their center of life within Jerusalem's borders.

Between1996 and1999 when the government was under the extreme right former Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, 3,008 east Jerusalemites were victims of ID revocation. After those four years, the number of revoked ID cards per year oscillated between 200 and 270 but in 2006, it rose to over 1300, the highest number in history.

The Israeli ministry of foreign affairs claims there is no specific reason for the increase in ID card cancellation except that the interior ministry and immigration office have become more active than before. I only wish they would give me a legitimate answer or justification to this simple question: “Why have our residency rights been revoked?”

Permanent or temporary migration to foreign countries (of course, this includes the West Bank) is cited by Israel as one justification for ID revocation. Still, if the rise in this migration is caused by the deterioration in living standards because of the separation wall that has strangled Jerusalem, which is very likely and reasonable, then it is practically a forced exclusion under the false pretense of “free will.” Once we leave by our own “free-will,” we are then not welcomed back, even as tourists. To me, conditional freedom is not freedom at all.

Besides this “free will”, the high birth rate among Arab Palestinians is arguably a major reason for this rapid rise in ID revocation. Israel's leaders are concerned about the growing gap in the Jew-to-Arab ratio within the country because of the higher population growth rate among Palestinians. Hence Israel, they fear, may soon become an ‘Arab state.’ However, the fertility rate of Arabs is declining while that of Jews has risen in recent years, according to an article published in Haaretz on June 2. The birth rate among Arabs was 4.3 children and 3.7 children among Jews in 2000, while the rate was four children and 3.9 children respectively in 2006. Also, the growth rate of the Arab-Palestinian population is slowing down - from 3.3% in 1999 to 2.5% in 2006. Could the rise in Jewish birth rates somehow help east Jerusalemites keep their residency rights?

The most disturbing aspect of this to me, however, is that Israel is taking away the sole and only proof of identification for east Jerusalemites, who are neither Israeli nor Palestinian citizens. Their blue-backed ID card is the sole indication of their presence as Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. Revoking these ID cards not only means losing a piece of paper, but losing an important human dimension of their identity.